June 13, 2007

The World is a Text

I was annoyed by this text. At first because I thought I was reading the same thing over and over again, and then because I realized that I really was reading the same thing over and over again. It's one thing to remind a reader of key ideas, but it seemed rather excessive to me for the author to completely restate the distinctions between a topic, a thesis, and a thesis statement just a few pages after the first time they brought it up. They even used almost the same wording both times. It was like they thought I wasn't smart enough to remember something they just told me. I think their concept of the world as text could have been more concise too. The whole thing felt very repetitive. I think the author made the point very clear long before they finished talking about it.
All that being said, I do agree with the way they view the world and writing in general. I think we are constantly involved in the task of interpreting everything around us. We are always trying to understand what our friends and partners mean by the things they say and do. Every moment of everyday we are consumers of our environments and for the most part, we never stop to think about that. Being mindful of the world around us and how we are perceiving it can help us understand and appreciate things we otherwise might miss.
The thing I found most interesting in this reading was the Alvin Toffler quote, "The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." With the technology in our lives expanding and updating all the time, we have to be willing to learn, unlearn, and relearn, or we will be left behind.